TSA Reports Increased Passenger Traffic Despite Delays, Cancellations

The airline industry was still smiling this morning, despite a weekend in which a pilot strike at one airline, technical issues for another and bad weather for all led to 3,500 flight cancellations and 8,000 delays.

The reason?

People in the U.S. are continuing to flock to U.S. airports to travel, raising the hopes and expectations of airline officials that this will be an extraordinary summer for fliers.

Between Friday, April 1, and Sunday, April 3, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) counted 6,388,891 people getting on a plane at a U.S. airport. Compared to the same first weekend in April of 2019, from April 5-7, there were 6,704,423 people who flew during those three similar days.

That’s 95 percent of what it was three years ago pre-pandemic, the year that the industry likes to use as its bellwether as a comparison to gauge its travel comeback. The coronavirus was declared a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, taking a sledgehammer to the entire travel industry.

While airline executives certainly weren’t pleased with 3,500 flight cancellations and more than double that amount in delays, some of it was out of their control with wild, nasty weather in Florida.

According to the Associated Press, storms in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Tampa in Florida helped disrupt schedules for JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, American, Frontier, Spirit and Alaska.

“Severe weather in the Southeast and multiple air traffic control delay programs have created significant impacts on the industry,” a JetBlue spokesperson said in an email. “Today’s cancellations will help us reset our operation and safely move our crews and aircraft back in to position.”

Alaska also had its own separate issues as pilots picketed contract negotiations in several cities and left the carrier shorthanded.

“Alaska Airlines failed to properly plan for increased travel demand and take the steps necessary to ensure it attracted and retained pilots,” the pilots union said in a Friday press release.